(JWR) ---- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com)
RECENTLY, AS I SUBSCRIBED to a sports magazine, twinges of guilt came back
from more than 40 years ago.

As a young man, I had a summer job as messenger
in the Pentagon, where General George C. Marshall subscribed to that same
magazine. But General Marshall never received his copy until after I had
read through the issue.

Among the many bad things that we all do, this may not rank very high. But
it was enough to generate guilt that survived for nearly half a century --
as it should. Every time I have read about General Marshall's role in World
War II or his later career as Secretary of State and author of "the Marshall
Plan," I have thought about that magazine.

It was not my magazine, even to delay for a few hours. None of the
fashionable cop-outs of today were acceptable back then -- thank heavens. I
was just plain wrong and knew it.

Guilt is a bad feeling for the individual, but vitally important for
society. Those who cannot think beyond "me" and "now" just want to get rid
of guilt, and there are shrinks and non-judgmental education to help them do
that. But remembering guilt has kept many of us from succumbing to
temptations to do far worse things than some of the trivialities we felt
guilty about.

If hanging on to a magazine that I should have delivered promptly caused me
this much hassle, why let myself in for more of the same by doing some of
the other things I could have done in later years, when I was in higher
positions, with more opportunities to do wrong things with worse
consequences?

Guilt, like physical pain, serves a purpose. There are rare individuals who
feel no pain from things that would have the rest of us in agony. It might
seem that being pain-free would be a great blessing, but it turns out to be
a curse to these people.

Those who do not feel pain must have medical check-ups far more often than
the rest of us. Some have been rushed from their doctor's office to the
hospital with appendicitis or other life-threatening conditions that they
did not realize they had.

Even for normal people, conditions like high blood pressure are especially
dangerous because we feel no symptoms right up to the moment of a fatal
stroke.

Guilt is the pain that saves us -- and society -- from many dangers. In
particular times with particular people, it can be overdone, as everything
human can be. But the attempt to banish it completely is recklessly shallow
and short-sighted.

What happens when we don't have guilt? Horrifying stories of children who
shoot their classmates at school -- like the current tragedy in Colorado --
are often blamed on guns, on "society" or on other scapegoats. Seldom, if
ever, does anyone consider the possibility that the guilt-free,
non-judgmental attitudes taught in the school itself may have contributed to
such tragedies.

Guilt is an inescapable consequence of personal responsibility. Like other
aspects of personal responsibility, it is deplored by those who set the
standards of political correctness today. The only kind of guilt that is
acceptable to them is collective guilt -- guilt as part of "society," guilt
for what long-dead ancestors did, guilt for everything except what you
yourself did.

Like many of the other glib and shallow ideas of our times, collective
guilt first came into its own back in the 1960s. Somehow we were all
responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was considered Deep
Stuff to say things like that, however little sense it made.

Collective guilt is politically useful for extracting money from the
government or special favors or exemptions from others. So what if it won't
stand up under logical scrutiny? Its purpose is not truth but power.

Before it was banished by the intelligentsia, guilt did yeoman service for
society. Some people who had literally gotten away with murder, and were not
even suspected by anyone, nevertheless came forth to confess or sometimes
took their own lives, leaving a note behind admitting their guilt.

No society can monitor all its members all the time. Guilt forces them to
monitor themselves. It is far more effective than police and courts, which
have all they can do to cope with those in whom all morality has been
extinguished.

There is nothing I can do today about General Marshall's magazine. But the
memory of it keeps me in bounds better than any distant policeman or
judge.